"In order to recognize that an explanation is the best, you don't have to have an explanation of the explanation."

If anyone is still following me after my long absence, welcome to my new obsession: Idiots who don't understand science and try to replace it with their god-bothering pseudo-science rambling.

Why the new obsession? Because I've only just now realized how bad the problem is.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evolution-Creationism-Intelligent-Design.aspx
http://www.gallup.com/poll/114544/Darwin-Birthday-Believe-Evolution.aspx

More than half the country either denies or doubts the merits of evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life on the planet. A full quarter of those surveyed flat out denied evolution. There's a Creationist Museum, which I knew about before but dismissed as fringe-loony stuff, with dioramas of early man living alongside dinosaurs. Dinosaurs with saddles mounted on them.

The elegant and encompassing theory that's withstood 150 years of scientific scrutiny and study, and has mountains of evidence to support it, is being fairly successfully challenged by a bunch of fanatics armed with Bronze-Age myths and the support of people who have no idea what evolution actually says.

Re: video above: EDUCATION FAIL.

I'll reserve judgment for actually seeing him in action, but I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the Doctor only being 6 years older than me. By the 12th or 13th we may actually have a Doctor that fulfills that idea I had a while back of casting a child signed to a 20 year contract to avoid the issue of "limited regenerations"...

Okay, this is sad. I saw Twilight the other day with friends (this is sad in and of itself, but it's not what I'm referring to) and I CAN'T REMEMBER ANYTHING PAST THE TWENTY-MINUTE MARK. OMG.

Here are my suspected culprits for this:

1) The was no real plot, and therefore nothing to remember
2) My brain is blocking the memory to defend itself
3) I was too busy laughing at the time

Then again, it might have something to do with that bottle of Jack Daniels I snuck into the theater.

I'll tell you what I do remember, though: Vampire Baseball and the Skin of a Killer™.

Also, that people complained about us laughing during the movie. All I can say is, dude, if you're taking this shit that seriously, you need help.

I wonder how long it'll take for Twilight to come out on dvd so I can torrent a decent rip. Because if it's anytime around the end of March, I am going to buy so much alcohol and watch it. FOR THE LULZ.

And that will be my 21st birthday bash. Getting hammered so I can mock a movie that's a major contributor to the ongoing degradation of our (pop) culture (Exhibit B).

That said, I feel I should explain. I've fallen hard for the "lolfan" mentality to approaching this stuff. Mainly because I feel like the alternative is extreme depression, but also because it really is very funny. Seriously. VAMPIRES THAT SPARKLE, ZOMG.

I blame this entirely on cleolinda's hilarious recaps, which include, among other things, an admonishment to Edward, the sparkly vampire, that "sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion." Donnie Darko references = Automatic WIN.

Why yes, the Interwebs ARE eating my brain. Why do you ask?

On a serious note, I feel like a fascist. Mainly because I would absolutely have no problem whatsoever with burning every copy of those books in existence if I were given the chance. No one who can sit through all that purple prose and "OMG SPARKLES" without alcohol or immense amounts of mocking laughter can possibly be old enough and mature enough to AT THE SAME TIME be exposed to the horrible message these books send:

"Yes, it's perfectly wonderful to fall in love with a manic-depressive STALKER as long as he's leik, totally hawt, and a vampire, and he wants to keep you safe all the time so he takes the ENGINE OUT OF YOUR CAR when he doesn't want you to go places, and never lets you take care of yourself (and really, why would you WANT to?) yet LEAVES YOU TO JUMP OFF A CLIFF when he has one of his funny mood swings and then says he won't sleep with you until you're married (ABSTINENCE, ABSTINENCE, ABSTINENCE), and then when you get pregnant with ZOMG DEATH BABY you absolutely should NOT try to save your own life (ABORTION IS BAD, Y'ALL, LIFE, LIFE, LIFE), because after all this you get to DIE and become the BESTEST VAMPIRE WHO EVER VAMPIRED and save the day without even having to do anything because YOU'RE JUST THAT PERFECT AND SPECIAL, you know?"

*shudders*

Also, I think Robert Pattinson (the actor who plays Edward) is probably going to self destruct soon. He's obviously chagrined (HA! See what I did there? IN-JOKE.) at having made this movie, and seems to be going all Johnny Depp in a desperate bid to get fired (the last minute of that video is what makes it ART) before he has to make the sequels (or finally gets mauled to death by desperate 13-year-old girls and/or their moms, whichever comes first).

I feel so very, very sorry for the actors. Here they are, just trying to get a paycheck and enough of a name-check to get a shoe in for their next gig and a career boost, and suddenly there's signing sessions turning into mobs and people asking to you to bite them and give them babies (DEATH BABIES? Maybe.)

I've seen fandoms with some scary people before, but none with such a high percentage of total psychotics. It's really making things like Pottermania and that Titanic fad (which, by the way, resulted at one point in me being tied to a chair at a sleepover and forced to watch that movie OVER AND OVER) look sane.

Ah, well. Peace. And if they find me dead from alcohol poisoning the day after Twilight comes out on DVD, you will know why.

EDIT: I have found the perfect quote for Twilight. "This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it." - Dorothy Parker (who, btw, was totally OUTRAGEOUS and now I'm in love with her because of it.)

I'm going to cry. Or be sick. I don't know which, yet. Possibly both.

You know those hard-core far-right crazies who spout the obvious lies about Democrat candidates they read from emails and blindly accepted? The ones who listen to Rush and Hannity and Coulter and think they're on to something?

Yeah, I've been raised by one of them.


( Email exchange with my father )

That was the abbreviated version. The long involves me pointing out the obvious stupidity of the proposal contained in the email, and him saying that it makes perfect sense given Obama's "arrogance" and general pinko evil-itude. It also contains a moment of soul-crushing despair as I felt the last remnants of hope that, underneath the ranting and the sloganing and the spouting of talking points and insane one-sided conspiracy theories, my father was actually a rational person slipping away to wherever dreams go to die.

I hear the military is working on amnesia guns. I want one. Aim it at my childhood memories, I need to get that man's influence out of my head before I turn into an ignorant, hate-mongering, fear-driven bigot. Gene therapy might also be a good idea, just to be sure.

WHY, David Tennant?! Why must you make me sad like this?

THE GOOD NEWS: My favorite Who writer is taking over the show, with a possible contribution from one of my favorite writers ever (Neil Gaiman).

THE BAD NEWS: NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! They be takin my manic hair-ruffling papercut alien boi away!!!!

*goes away for a while to have a moment*

I'm sure after I've processed I'll calm down a bit. And maybe I won't cry. Too much.

Seriously, though, Tennant is amazing, and I love him as the Doctor. I was really hoping he'd stick around for one more year, give Moffat a whole season with a lead actor who's guaranteed to do justice to his dialogue. Moffat/Tennant: The Team of Timey-Wimey Awesomeness. Rivaled only by Douglas Adams/Tom Baker: Team of Utter Silliness.

:(

Gah. I've just realized why I've been breaking out in a rash ever since the campaign really got going. The country is treating political races like American Idol contests. Talent and ability be damned! Who looks best on the cover of People?

Also I had an hour-long argument with my dad the other day after I was telling him about Jon Stewart's reaction to Palin & Co.'s "Real America" comments and he said "well people in NYC *do* hate America."

Oh, and "Joe the Plumber" is getting support for a congressional run while an unbalanced woman gets media attention for claiming an Obama supporter carved a "B" into her cheek. A "B" that was obviously put there by someone using a blunt instrument and a mirror.

For fuck's sake.

I am going to build this device.

HoffSpace. Oh my dear and fuzzy lord.

*is waiting for news that this is a joke*

*is praying for news that this is a joke*

I wonder if the RSC knows that if ever they were to record a performance and release it on DVD, the current production of Hamlet with David Tennant and Patrick Stewart would probably have the biggest cash flow they could possibly hope for. Whovians, Trekkies, fangirls... Overall, waaaaay more interest in this one than your average Shakespeare production.

I, personally, would buy multiple copies.

Come on! It's David-fucking-Tennant as *Hamlet*. The man excels at tragic, unhinged, vaguely dangerous protagonists, and Hamlet's one of my absolute favorites in that category. I couldn't *not* own it if I had the chance.

*starts sending brainwaves at the honchos at RSC* Film it... Film it...

That's it. I've had it. I've known for ages my parents don't hold me in very high regard, but they insult me, and they ignore me, and they throw things at me, and then they expect me to be their ketchup scapegoat? I'm sorry but "you eat a lot of ketchup, you should have noticed we were going to run out, so you have to wade through all the people at the supermarket lined up for hurricane supplies so we can have Heinze's on our burgers tonight and we don't care if you can't even find a parking space" is just a little too much. Even before Mom attacked me over some total BS that it turns out had nothing to do with me other than Dad using me as a scapegoat.

I've been debating whether to go to school this semester and try to work out the financing as I go, or if I should take a semester or two off, get another job, move out, and start saving for next year. I've been hesitant to skip out on school, mainly due to anxiety about becoming a dropout, but I have to say, events have conspired to make this seem like the more desirable choice.

Advantages of taking a break:

- Seeing as how I'm in my third year and haven't declared a major yet, it might be nice to take the time to figure out what the hell I'm doing. Bumbling around waiting for a clear path to emerge from the scattered course subjects I've taken for the last two years hasn't been working out as well as I'd hoped.

- I get to move out.

- I'll have some time to develop a credit score (shockingly, I've neglected to expend the energy necessary to build up a financial history) and get some monetary elbow room.

- I get to move out.

- I can use the time to apply to a slightly better school than the low-rent local University's deformed cousin.

- I get to move out.

There's a trend emerging in that list, and it's there because I've come to the conclusion that once you realize that your parents consider you their psychic ketchup servant, it's time to go.

So I have no credit, a part time job that pays very little, and a severe allergy to living with other people, no matter how cheap it may be. And parents who will not help me out by co-signing a lease or loan application. On the plus side, I already have all the easy-to-move furniture I'd need.

So: No money, no credit, no co-signers, no plan, no full-time job, no student status. But I have furniture. Yay.

Note to self: Do NOT drink coke while watching new episodes of Top Gear. Bad idea. Painful.

I don't know why a bunch of middle-aged boys obsessed with cars sitting around shouting at each other, catching things on fire, and offending everybody should be at all amusing, but this show is funny as hell.

(while in Japan)
Hammond: I don't like fish.
James: Well, you've come to the wrong country.

Hee.

You wanna know how weird my brain is? I couldn't find my iPod connection cable just now, so I spent 15 minutes looking everywhere for it. Finally I said to myself "where would I have put it if I was in one of my funny moods?" And lo, I discovered it. Inside a half-empty bag of Hershey's Kisses.

>_<

Nothing I do makes any sense, I swear.

Well, I liked it. Quite a lot, actually. Sure, there were tons of things I suspect many people hated with a passion, but I liked that some of it went in bizarre new directions, some of it was very old-fashioned cheesy, and some of it was just made of AWESOME.

But mostly, I like it because this year's Implausible Plot Device was roughly 100,000 times more interesting than Tinkerbell Jesus.

Holy shit!



(for best results, wait for entire video to load before watching)

Between Quantum of Solace and The Dark Knight, I'd say this whole "rebooting" thing they're doing with these franchises is going rather well so far.

Excellent that it's happening with two franchises I've loved for ages.

I fucking love this piece:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o3eiEHmJUA&feature=related (embedding has been turned off)

(The first 13 seconds don't have sound. Ignore this and move on to the playing.)

That coda... Jesus.

I'm going to try my best to ignore the tenterhooks I'm on while waiting for the Doctor Who finale (OMGRTDWTH?!?!?!?), and just pop in to say that Wall-E is amazing. Cute beyond words, I swear. And I don't even like cute, normally.

Okay, now I'm more upset with Russell T. Davies than I've ever been after watching one of his episodes of Doctor Who - yes, even more than after "Love and Monsters" aired. I've just realized that all along he was completely capable of freaking me the hell out and has apparently been holding back all this time.

"Midnight" scared the bejeezus out of me. It hit a real nerve by playing not only on the sheer creepitude of the mimetic entity, but the desperation of an individual standing up to mob rule. I literally have nightmares about this stuff, and here's the Doctor, who's supposed to be the comforting presence of authority and reason, helpless to do any more about it than I could.

Great episode. Really, truly fantastic. The bad guy wasn't the villain, and the good guy wasn't the hero. In the end it all just came down to people, with their flaws and their virtues.

And David Tennant. Yes. As much as I like crazy people, it's nice to see something new every now and then, and, as it turns out, he's very good at portraying paralyzed desperation. Give the man a gold star and a cookie, he done good. Get a plate of cookies, actually, for the whole cast. Tennant and the woman playing the entity get extra, though.

Also, this Steven Lowis character at joo-see.com is really starting to piss me the hell off. I Google episode names for reviews every week, and every now and then I've stumbled on one of his without it pinging that it's the same reviewer. Well, now it has, and from what I can tell, this guy just doesn't like Doctor Who, at least the new series. He bitches about everything, I swear. My strongest recommendation is that he should just keep fondling his old tapes of Jon Pertwee episodes and leave off reviewing New Who, because while I can grudgingly appreciate a strongly critical review, no one likes whining on this level.

And I have to state this again, in no uncertain terms: anyone who actually gets upset about writers stepping on continuity in a fandom that hasn't had a stable canon for forty years is in severe need of psychiatric assistance.

Is it 2010 yet? Bring on Steven Moffat-helmed Doctor Who. I'm ready for complex storylines, examinations of the consequences of time-travel, and getting scared pantsless.

Watching "Forest of the Dead" I went back to considering why I had loved "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" so much, since as another two-parter, the past two eps have followed a similar vein. Moffat scares the crap out of you, gives you tons of mysteries to wonder about during the week, wraps it all up neatly with some emotional bits, and ends it on a high note. Who cares if he's formulaic, at least it's a formula that works, especially on Doctor Who, my assigned "feel good" TV show. And it's a step up from endless messianic imagery and alien invasions so ridiculous they regularly test my formidable powers of suspension of disbelief.

But reason number one why Moffat-controlled Doctor Who is at the top of my expectations list is that you can tell he's thought about the show. A lot. Not just about how to script the latest alien threat to Earth, because any womble working in scifi can figure that much out, but about what makes the premise and character of Doctor Who unique. Why is Doctor Who different from any other scifi show out there? Because it doesn't have any limits. You're not restricted to the 5-year mission of the Federation Starship SS Buttcrack within the Delta Omega Spliff Quadrant. You've got a time machine that can go anywhere in the universe, why waste it mucking around with things like linear time and everyday reality? You've got a main character who's a thousand-year-old genius eccentric, why give him ordinary problems meant for normal heroes?

He has, in essence, spent quite some time considering what the life of a time-traveller, and specifically one like the Doctor, must be like. And "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" is just the boiled down version. Conversations with the future through DVDs, hopping through points in a person's life through time-windows, meeting someone who's known you for ages for the first time...

Season 5. Bring. It. On.

Oh, and if I read another rant by one more obsessive ming mong who insists on watching a show they, based on the amount of whining they do, apparently hate, I'm going to track them down and choke them with my Tom Baker scarf in defense of the IQ average of the Who fanbase. For God's sake, learn to take the good with the bad, shut up about the Doctor being asexual, and quit telling me that Steven Moffat is "repetitive." So was Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean he was a bad writer. And all this insistence on continuity with a show that chucked that out the TARDIS door altogether somewhere in the 60s is reaching almost dangerous levels of insanity. So your pet fanwank contradicts some throwaway line in the latest episode. Grow up.

... She says as she rants about the foibles of human behavior she has absolutely no control over.

On the recommendation of spooforbrains, I watched some Top Gear, specifically the show where they travel across Botswana in beaters. Waaaay more amusing than any car show has a right to be.

First part here:


You can find the other five parts by clicking around the related videos.

So what was my brilliant idea for today? Only to watch another Steven Moffat episode of Doctor Who with the lights off. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now, but no. I do it again, when I know he's going come up with something terrifying. Which this time happens to be shadows. That kill people. In the dark...